Equal Voices at Every Table: Advancing Women’s Leadership in Diplomacy
Despite decades of commitments and growing global awareness, women remain critically underrepresented across the senior ranks of diplomacy, peacebuilding, and international leadership. From foreign ministries and multilateral institutions to peace negotiation tables and mediation processes, the structures of global governance continue to reflect deep-seated inequalities that limit women’s full and equal participation. According to the 2025 Women in Diplomacy Index, women hold only 22.5% of ambassadorial and permanent representative positions worldwide, At the United Nations, women make up only 21% of permanent representatives, and since 1947, a mere 7% of all ambassadors have been women. Seventy-three countries have never appointed a female permanent representative to the UN.
At the same time, the global context makes women’s leadership more urgent than ever. Conflicts are increasing worldwide, with the number of active conflicts now at its highest level in over 70 years. Armed conflict disproportionately affects women and girls, exacerbating insecurity, displacement, and gender-based violence across regions.
Twenty-six years ago, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 (2000), recognizing the critical link between peace and security, gender equality, and women’s leadership. Since then, nine additional resolutions have expanded the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, reaffirming the importance of women’s meaningful participation in conflict prevention, mediation, peacebuilding, and post-conflict recovery.
Evidence consistently demonstrates that women’s participation strengthens the durability and legitimacy of peace processes and political transitions. Yet women continue to remain significantly excluded from formal negotiations, comprising only 7% of negotiators and 14% of mediators in formal peace processes globally, according to UN Women. The United Nations Secretary-General has repeatedly called for women to constitute at least one-third of all participants in UN-led or co-led peace processes.
Progress has been made, but it remains uneven and fragile. The barriers women face in reaching and exercising leadership in diplomacy and peace and security spaces are structural — embedded in institutional cultures, recruitment and promotion systems, unequal access to networks and sponsorship, and the persistent imbalance of professional and caregiving responsibilities.
Against this backdrop, and on the occasion of the International Day for Women in Diplomacy, this high-level dialogue convened by the Women’s Circle and the Women’s International Forum (WIF) will bring together members of WIF, the Circle of Women Permanent Representatives, women ambassadors and Deputy Permanent Representatives, senior UN women leaders, academics, and practitioners to discuss how to move beyond symbolic commitments toward meaningful and lasting change.
Objectives:
- Provide a forum for candid exchange on the status of women’s representation in diplomacy, international organizations, and peace and security processes.
- Examine the structural and cultural barriers that continue to limit women’s access to and exercise of leadership in global institutions and formal peace negotiations.
- Explore the role of mentorship, sponsorship, and institutional support in advancing younger generations of women leaders in diplomacy and peacebuilding.
- Reinforce the evidence that diverse leadership and women’s participation contribute to more effective diplomacy, more durable peace agreements, and more inclusive policymaking outcomes.
- Identify practical steps that institutions, member states, and individuals can take to create more equitable negotiation spaces and decision-making bodies.
- Encourage reflection on the shared responsibility of all actors in advancing gender equality across global governance and peace and security institutions.
Speakers
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H.E. Ms. Annalena BaerbockPresident of the General Assembly of the United NationsAmbassador Annalena Baerbock served as Germany’s Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs from December 2021 until May 2025. Throughout her career she has been a strong advocate for the multilateral system, human rights, and climate policy. She was an elected member of the German Parliament (Deutscher Bundestag) from 2013 until June 2025. In 2018, she was elected co-chairperson of the Green Party and held the position of party leader until 2022. Prior to becoming an MP, Annalena Baerbock advised her party’s parliamentary group in the German Bundestag on foreign and security policy and served as chairperson of her party in the federal state of Brandenburg. From 2005 to 2008 she worked for a Member of the European Parliament. Annalena Baerbock holds a Master of Laws (LLM) from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Hamburg University.
She was born in Hanover on 15 December 1980 and has two daughters.
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H.E. Ms. Sima BahousExecutive Director of UN WomenMs. Sima Sami Bahous became UN Women’s third Executive Director on 30 September 2021. A champion for women and girls, gender equality, and youth empowerment, as well as a keen advocate for quality education, poverty alleviation, and inclusive governance, Ms. Bahous brings to the position more than 35 years of leadership experience at the grassroots, national, regional, and international levels, coupled with expertise in advancing women’s empowerment and rights, addressing discrimination and violence, and promoting sustainable socio-economic development towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Ms. Bahous most recently served as Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations in New York. Prior to this position, she served as Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States at the United Nations Development Programme from 2012 to 2016 and Assistant Secretary-General and Head of the Social Development Sector at the League of Arab States, from 2008 to 2012. She has also served in two ministerial posts in Jordan as President of the Higher Media Council from 2005 to 2008 and as Adviser to King Abdullah II from 2003 to 2005.
She was Media Adviser and Director of Communication for the Royal Hashemite Court from 2001 to 2003, Acting Executive Director for the King Hussein Foundation from 2000 to 2001 and Executive Director of the Noor Al Hussein Foundation from 1998 to 2001. She also worked for UNICEF and with a number of United Nations and civil society organizations, and taught development and communication studies at different universities in Jordan.
Ms. Bahous holds a PhD in mass communication and development from Indiana University, United States, a Master of Arts in literature and drama from Essex University, United Kingdom, and a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Jordan University. She is fluent in Arabic and English, and proficient in French.
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Prof. Rachel VogelsteinAssociate Professor of Practice at Columbia University's School of International and Public AffairsRachel Vogelstein is an associate professor of practice at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Ann F. Kaplan Women’s Initiative at the Institute of Global Politics, where she focuses on gender equality in the U.S. and globally. She is also the Faculty Co-Director of the Human Rights, Gender, and Equity concentration.
Vogelstein previously served in the Biden Administration as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the White House Gender Policy Council, and concurrently served as Special Advisor on Gender at the National Security Council, where she led policy development on women’s health and reproductive rights, gender-based violence, and women’ s economic security and political participation, among other issues.
Before that, she was an advisor to Secretary Hillary Clinton on women’s issues, serving on both of her presidential campaigns and as the Director of Girls’ and Women’s Initiatives at the Clinton Foundation. During the Obama Administration, she was an official in the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues at the US Department of State, where she developed a landmark foreign policy agenda for women’s empowerment, for which she received the Secretary of State’s Superior Honor Award.
Vogelstein is the author of Awakening: #MeToo and the Global Fight for Women’s Rights, which was recognized by the New York Times for capturing the global impact of the #MeToo movement. Previously, she served as the Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow and Director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, and taught courses on women’s rights at Georgetown Law School and as a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School.
A graduate of Columbia’s Barnard College and Georgetown Law School, Vogelstein began her career as a clerk for the Honorable Thomas L. Ambro on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and as Equal Justice Works Fellow at the National Women’s Law Center focused on reproductive rights. She serves on the board of Too Young Too Wed and the leadership council of the Coalition for Women in National Security, and previously served on the advisory board of Planned Parenthood Global and the National Women’s History Museum.